PRESS COVERAGE ON: “THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST”
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| The New Yorker |
| 09/15/03 |
Gibson has half-jokingly remarked that "The Passion" may be a career-killer for him. If it is not, if it somehow manages to open, and even to succeed, it will be in no small measure owing to [Paul] Lauer's efforts.
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| Advertising Age |
''The Passion of the Christ'' has stunned even the believers. …A dissection of some of the movie's marketing details to date, shepherded by Icon's Los Angeles-based marketing consultant Paul Lauer, reveals a campaign that covered all the obvious bases and a number of far-less-than-obvious ones. ''There's been nothing conventional about how this movie and its marketing have unfolded,'' said Alan Nierob, a spokesman for producer Mel Gibson's Icon Productions. ''It's defied all the practiced way of doing things.''
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| Atlanta Journal-Constitution |
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Call it the "Passion effect." Suddenly, faith and values are hip. …Befuddled media executives are scrambling to catch up. Network news producers, newspaper syndicates, Hollywood moguls --- everyone is wondering how to get in on this niche market, totally missing the point that it is not a niche. It is the market. Motive Entertainment President Paul Lauer, who marketed "The Passion" for Icon Productions, says: "The phenomenon is real. This isn't a mirage, a blip on the radar, or a one-time thing. It's been on the horizon for years."
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| Atlanta Journal-Constitution |
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Call it the "Passion effect." Suddenly, faith and values are hip. …Befuddled media executives are scrambling to catch up. Network news producers, newspaper syndicates, Hollywood moguls --- everyone is wondering how to get in on this niche market, totally missing the point that it is not a niche. It is the market. Motive Entertainment President Paul Lauer, who marketed "The Passion" for Icon Productions, says: "The phenomenon is real. This isn't a mirage, a blip on the radar, or a one-time thing. It's been on the horizon for years."
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| London Sunday Times |
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The exploding enthusiasm for biblical fiction has stunned an American cultural establishment still reeling from the unprecedented triumph of Mel Gibson's controversial film, “The Passion of the Christ”. Paul Lauer, director of marketing for Motive Entertainment, predicted last month that if “The Passion” did well on its opening weekend "there will be a lot of powerful people in Hollywood saying 'Get me a Jesus picture'." It has since been reported that the major studios are considering at least 10 Bible-related films, including a drama based on Noah's Ark and a possible remake of The Ten Commandments.
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| Orlando Sentinel |
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…Sophisticated but highly unorthodox campaign…the film "has a revival quality to it, in the sense that it's spreading through the air like spiritual pollen," says Paul Lauer, head of marketing for “The Passion” and president of Los Angeles-based Motive Entertainment.
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| Los Angeles Times |
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Combining the built-in audience of the Bible, the incendiary potential of "The Birth of a Nation" and the marketing genius of "The Blair Witch Project," the arrival of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" feels like a milestone in modern culture.
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| Press Enterprise Riverside |
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The journey of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" to box-office success when it opens this week on Ash Wednesday would be no miracle. The movie's marketing efforts are paying off.
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| Victoria Times Colonist |
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Newsday calls the strategy "faith-based marketing." And Icon official Paul Lauer has been a key strategist in the campaign. "Every film has to find its core audience," Lauer said. "And being a film about the story of Jesus, the natural core audience is going to be those who believe and embrace that story." The industry weekly, Variety, scrutinized the business strategy and approved.
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| Lancaster Newspapers |
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Movie's buildup grows to biblical proportions… Gibson's campaign has generated so much buzz that three weeks before the opening, advance ticket agency Fandango was reporting 54 percent of its sales were for "The Passion," according to the Chicago Tribune.
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| St. Louis Post-Dispatch |
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Gibson's grass-roots marketing team has relied on unconventional tactics – mailing study kits to churches, sponsoring Web-based discussion groups and even affixing an ad for the movie to a car in Sunday's Daytona 500 race. It's working.
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| Newsday |
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Gibson has tapped into a network of faith-based marketing and entertainment businesses and ministries whose Christian-oriented pop songs, movies, videos, books, Internet sites and databases have been largely ignored by the mainstream media. …Lauer declined to discuss this campaign in detail. "There's a certain proprietary element to it," he said. "We have spent a great deal of time creating a new system that sidesteps the normal Hollywood approach to marketing a film."
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| Ad Age |
| 3/2/04 |
Mel Gibson, The Miracle-Working Movie Marketer: A movie that could have been one of the toughest sells in the history of Hollywood -- an R-rated religious period piece with relentless violence, subtitles and no stars -- has become a textbook study in both high-profile and below-the-radar marketing. “The Passion of the Christ”, which opened in 3,000 theaters on Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday, took in $26.5 million in 24 hours -- a historic benchmark topped only by two other films: Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Star Wars. Yesterday, the highly controversial film's U.S. marketer and distributor, Newmarket Films, reported total box office receipts for the first five days of screenings to be $125 million.
"They’ve turned every liability into an asset," says Paula Silver, who was a key marketer with Newmarket Films on My Big Fat Greek Wedding. "The pre-release controversy can do nothing but help. This has gotten more free marketing than any movie I can think of." Prior to the movie's opening, the Gibson effort sent 250,000 DVDs to Christian ministers and priests around the country, as a Web site, passionmaterials.com provided those same clerics with an instant means to order packs of promotional posters, hymnal slip cards and door-hangers they could distribute at their services.
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| Tucson Citizen |
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…Nobody is doubting the brilliance of Gibson's marketing.
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| USA Today |
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Smart, grass-roots marketing and merchandising, along with a healthy dose of controversy, are replacing the typical film's $30 million marketing budget to spread the word about “The Passion of the Christ”.
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| Variety |
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A rival distrib exec praised the "Passion" marketing. "They've done a great job of drawing a line. You're either for it and you want to see it or you're against it and you want to see it. They've even advanced the idea that you're a hypocrite if you're against it and you haven't seen it."
"We have never experienced this level of interest in group sales," said Regal Entertainment Group marketing senior VP Dick Westerling.
Rival execs marveled at how Icon and Newmarket had encouraged "Passion's" core audience of churchgoers to rush in next week. "They've convinced them that they've got to see it and they've got to see it right away. It's not a movie, it's a cause," one said.
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| Washington Post |
| 2/17/04 |
…Most talked-about movie event in America, in large part because of a marketing strategy... Paul Dergarabedian, the president of Exhibitor Relations, a company that tracks box office sales, told Variety that the pre-release buzz of "The Passion of the Christ" rivals that of the first "Star Wars" prequel, one of the top-grossing movies of all time. …One Hollywood executive at a major studio, who asked for anonymity, described it as "a brilliant marketing campaign."
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| US News & World Report |
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As the director and sole financial backer of “The Passion of the Christ”, Mel Gibson knows that good buzz means good box office. Gibson's solution? Skip the usual marketing drill. Instead, his company has launched an inventive direct-marketing campaign, getting the word out to the more 220 million Christians by sending 250,000 promotional DVDs to pastors around the country, asking that they be played for the congregations. A Web site (www.passionmaterials.com) supplied churches with hundreds of posters and postcards to pass out to their flocks. Licensed Passion merchandise, including a $16.99 necklace with a pewter nail and coffee mugs, is also available. Some 15,000 religious leaders were invited to advance screenings and 300 Passion summit meetings. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, praised “The Passion” on his radio program, heard by almost 2 million listeners. The grass-roots approach worked.
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| Star Tribune |
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From group sales in the hundreds to a NASCAR vehicle hood to promotional alliances with large religious organizations, the buildup is ferocious for "The Passion of the Christ."
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| Associated Press |
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The film succeeded through Gibson's brilliant marketing strategy.
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